


Make a Wish

by theotheralissa



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4759859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theotheralissa/pseuds/theotheralissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nino has the chance to go back and change a missed opportunity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make a Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muffinsome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muffinsome/gifts).



> Birthday fic for my Bunny! <3 Happy happy birthday to you!!!! <33333

After sixteen years together Nino hits a fork in the road. 

It’s at a party at the end of the year and Nino has probably had just the right amount to drink. Or the wrong amount depending on how he looks at it. But he’s looking around the room, at the staff and the members and their friends, and it’s making the wheels turn in his head at an uncomfortable pace. 

“More?” Jun asks him. Nino nods emphatically and Jun, knowing what to do as always, is already filling up his glass. 

“Is he acting weird tonight?” Nino asks, nodding over at Ohno. He looks the same as always, Nino supposes, but he can’t help but feel like something is a little off. 

“Who?” Jun asks, looking up from Nino’s glass. Nice and full so he sets the bottle back down on the bar. 

“That guy,” Nino says, pointing. 

“You noticed?” Jun asks. 

Nino narrows his eyes. “Noticed what?” 

He turns around, dizzy. Jun catches him and helps him to sit at the bar where no one is there but him. No one is in the room but him and Jun. Not Aiba or Sho or Ohno. None of the staff or the guests. No one. 

“I wasn’t going to do this just yet,” Jun says. 

\---

Just before they debut Nino hits a fork in the road. 

He can leave Johnny’s or he can stay and ride it out and see where it leads. It doesn’t come naturally but five years, ten years, somehow Arashi become like his brothers, like his family but on a different level. The only other four people in the world who have been through what he has. 

They say sometimes in interviews that they never fight. It isn’t exactly true, but it isn’t the first thing Nino thinks of when he thinks about Arashi. Mostly the feeling of being with them is quiet, silent on some days. The good kind of comfortable, soft silence where Nino doesn’t have to look up from his game to know the expressions the others are making. Over the years there isn’t one of them who hasn’t either thought about quitting or felt like they weren’t going to make it but this silence is the proof that everything they’ve gone through to get here was for something worth lasting. 

“Ni~no,” Aiba nudges his foot. Eleven years later they’re in the NHK dressing room already in costume and Jun is standing up so that he doesn’t wrinkle his pants while the rest are on sofas. 

Nino kicks Aiba and he calls for Sho to complain but Sho is a bundle of nerves. 

It’s later that night when all of the moments of comfortable silence from the last eleven years turn loud and deafening like piercing white noise. 

Ohno says he likes him. He might love him. He can’t be drunk because they don’t serve alcohol backstage and it’s between commercial breaks, so rushed and quick. He looks at Aiba accusingly thinking it might be a stupid trick or a dare but Aiba just shrugs at him from across the room mouthing _what?_

Jun nods in an irritating way that makes Nino thinks he knows something about this and Nino’s own heart leaps in his chest because yeah. Yes. Fuck. It isn’t the first time the idea of this has crossed his mind and even if Ohno hadn’t brought it up the last time wouldn’t have been the last. 

He remembers being rushed to the stage. His fingers brushed there against Ohno’s and a white hot chill ran straight up his spine. He could have left Johnny’s when he was a teenager. Ohno could have left before they made it ten years. 

All through the rest of the broadcast he thinks about how later he’s going to kiss Ohno. He’s going to kiss him like he’s always wanted to. It feels strange, bubbly under his skin, maybe he’ll kiss Ohno the way Ohno imagined kissing him. He never knew, never would have been the one to bring it up. 

Later Ohno will be dead tired after the broadcast and the manager will arrange for a car to take him straight home. Nino won’t be able to find him anywhere in the studio and he’ll find out the next day what happened but now it’s a matter of timing. A matter of too many things welling up inside of him and too little means of release. He takes out his phone a few times but doesn’t send a message. He goes out drinking with Aiba and meets a guy named Minoru and spends the night with him. Spends the next night with him. Spends the next two years of his life with him. 

\---

“Are you a dream?” Nino asks Jun. His voice echoes in the empty room. 

“No,” Jun says. “But I learned a magic trick.” 

Nino sighs. It’s too strange to not be a dream. Nino doesn’t know how to make everyone in a room disappear and if Jun can do more advanced magic than he can he may as well give up.

If he doesn’t say anything, silence fills the room. He taps on the counter just to hear the sound of it. 

“I can give you one...” Jun says. “A chance? I don’t want to say _wish_ that sounds weird.” 

“You sound weirder than I’ve ever heard you, J,” Nino says, blinking a few times. The room is still empty. 

That night rushes into his head. That New Year’s Eve when Ohno left early like the memories are being pushed in front of his eyes. He can almost see it. 

“Would you change that night if you could?” Jun asks. 

“No,” Nino says. 

Because even now as images flood into his head of kissing Ohno, being close to him, maybe they would be memories if he’d let them become that. Even now he doesn’t regret Minoru. 

They broke up a couple of years ago. Minoru isn’t in the industry but he’s friends with a lot of people who are. He was a friend of a friend of Aiba’s. That was why they were introduced in the bar. He told Minoru the first night they were together that he was in love with someone else. It was just a night together, but it was easy to be with Minoru. Easier than being with Ohno because he had a feeling that if it happened with Ohno he wouldn’t be able to go back. He wouldn’t be able to talk to the interviewers about his ideal girlfriend or who in Arashi he wants to kiss. 

“He was kind of like a... buffer,” Nino says. It sounds strange to his ears but it’s true and Minoru knew it at the time too. 

“Then I’ll put things back the way they were,” Jun says. 

“Wait,” Nino says. 

\---

In another world that night Ohno isn’t dead tired and Nino leaves with him instead. Ohno comes back to his place and they drink a little because they’re both a little nervous and then they start kissing. Kissing turns into more. Nino has had experience with guys before but when he whispers the question against Ohno’s lips he gets the answer that Ohno hasn’t. It doesn’t surprise him terribly but then he wonders why and he says it out loud. 

“Why?” he says. He’s pushing Ohno’s shirt back and over his shoulders and doesn’t exactly break the kiss but slows down so Ohno can answer him. 

“Why what?” Ohno asks pulling back. 

“Why now?” Nino asks. They aren’t kissing anymore and it feels a little strange the way he’s tugging on Ohno’s clothes. 

Ohno blinks. “It just hit me all at once,” he says. 

That’s how Ohno is. He sometimes works on a piece of art for months and months dragging paint on the canvas into the most minute details. But other times it hits him like lightning. He does the choreography the night before they’re supposed to start rehearsing or he starts doodling something on the back of a pamphlet that turns into a mural. 

“Then how do I know what I am to you?” Nino asks, curiously. Is he the detailed painting or is he the flash of inspiration that comes and goes. 

Ohno hesitates. Clearly he doesn’t know the answer, but it doesn’t make Nino want to kiss him any less. He does. He kisses him all night and slips out in the morning and he meets Minoru at the bar a couple of nights later when Aiba invites him out. 

\---

Nino looks at Jun skeptically. 

“Magic doesn’t work like that,” he says. “It’s fate, you can’t really change it can you?” 

Jun shrugs. “I think you can sometimes,” he says. He goes around to the other side of the bar and pours two shots one for each of them. 

“Well that was it then,” Nino says. “The wish or chance or whatever. It didn’t change anything.” 

He wants to ask Jun how it is he’s doing any of this, but for the most part he thinks this has to be a dream. When he takes the shot he can feel his consciousness getting fuzzy. It’s like the place between dreaming and waking up and the party guests start to come into focus again. Jun puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“I said I wasn’t going to do this just yet,” he says. 

Nino shakes him off. He doesn’t have the patience for this. If Jun is just going to be mysterious and cryptic Nino might as well wake up from his dream already. He probably has to be up early for work. 

“You have to do it now,” Jun says. 

Nino looks over at where the outlines of Sho and Ohno are sitting on the sofa. Aiba is across the room talking to one of the staff members. Minoru is there somewhere, Nino saw him in passing and when he looks around the room he finds his outline there talking to a guy Nino recognizes as a friend of Aiba’s. 

When the room snaps back into focus Nino almost doesn’t want to go to where Ohno is. He turns back to Jun a little defiantly, but when he turns around Jun isn’t there anymore. He’s in the place of the guy talking to Minoru and Nino swallows down the burning feeling in his throat. 

He doesn’t know what he expects but he goes over to where Sho and Ohno are sitting. They’re not talking about anything in particular and Ohno is a funny mix of tired and drunk. 

“Hey old man,” Nino says, kicking Ohno’s shin. 

Sho puts a hand on Ohno’s shoulder then squeezes and stands up. “You can watch him for a while,” he says and Ohno whines as Nino grins wickedly. 

But once Sho is gone he just sits down. Close. Closer than other people usually sit together, he notices, but it’s the way he likes to sit with Ohno. 

“Did I kiss you before?” Nino says, almost certain it must have been a dream but entertaining the tiniest doubt. 

“I don’t know did you?” Ohno asks. 

Nino laughs. Of course not, he thinks. 

Later that night he looks around for Jun but every time he sees him he’s talking it up with someone Nino doesn’t know. It could be friends or people he just met. Jun is good at things like that. But Nino doesn’t want to interrupt him. He thinks about asking Minoru to come home with him but he hasn’t asked that of him in a couple of years now. 

He leaves the party saying only the goodbyes he can’t avoid and goes home by himself. 

\---

He waits for the dream to happen again. Even on the ride home he expects to snap his eyes open and appear back in that empty room. A part of him is still frustrated that Jun could pull off such a trick.

“You really did a number on me, J,” Nino mumbles to himself. 

At home he tosses off his shoes and flops down on the sofa. He picks up his 3DS and lies on his back. He never bothered with the lights and the screen is so bright he squints a little when he first turns it on. 

He doesn’t feel his phone buzzing at first. It’s in his pocket and he mistakes the feeling for the way his head has been spinning all night. He rolls over on his side and it buzzes hard against his thigh and finally he realizes what it is almost dropping his 3DS in the process. The phone slips out of his hand and now there are two screens lighting up the room. The one from the 3DS in his hand and the other from his phone. Lit up by a call from Ohno. 

“Hello?” Nino says, picking up. He doesn’t even expect it to really be Ohno. But it is. His voice soft and languid on the other side. 

“You did kiss me,” Ohno says. 

Nino sits up, game forgotten at his side. 

“Did I?” he asks. 

“Yeah on New Years,” Ohno says. “You came home with me and you stayed overnight and then you left.” 

Nino swallows. “And?” he says. 

“And then you were with Minoru-kun,” Ohno says. 

Nino clutches the phone, heart pounding in his chest then just like he thought would happen he snaps his eyes open again. 

\---

“There,” Jun says. 

“I wish I could take a picture of how smug you look right now,” Nino says. 

“It worked didn’t it?” Jun says. 

Nino can see the party guests in wavy lines like everyone is underwater. 

People come into view more clearly one by one and Nino doesn’t take his eyes off of Ohno, thinking about how he’s going to kiss him senseless tonight. 

\--- 

They stay at Nino’s place and to his surprise Ohno kisses him back with no hesitation. 

“Ever since then?” Nino asks against Ohno’s lips. He unbuttons the front of Ohno’s shirt. They’re still standing in the entrance by the door. 

“Ever since then,” Ohno nods. 

That night Ohno spends the night in Nino’s bed. He doesn’t leave in the morning. 

\---

When they go to work in the next day Jun smiles at Nino knowingly. He and Ohno don’t stagger their entrance on purpose but Ohno is lagging a little behind. It may be another one of Jun’s tricks but somehow it works out that the other three go on a location shoot and the two of them are left at the company. 

“Is making everyone disappear something you’ve always been able to do?” Nino asks. A magician doesn’t reveal his tricks but Nino has to know how he’s doing this. 

“Just before we had our debut," Jun starts. “After we went to that yakiniku restaurant Aiba walked to the train station and he saw one of those street fortune tellers.” 

Nino thinks of those people that sit there with a small table and chair. Sometimes with tarot cards, sometimes tea leaves. Always ready to scam you out of your money. 

“The woman read his palm and said that his life was going to change and that it wouldn’t be easy,” he says. “And instead of a fortune she gave him a wish.” 

Nino nods slowly. The skeptic in him wants to protest but he can’t deny that trick Jun pulled off and he’s sure that making it impossible for Nino to deny was precisely why Jun did it. 

“It wasn’t just any wish though it was one that could be shared so once he made his wish he gave it to me,” Jun says. “Aiba wished for us all to debut together.” 

Nino thinks about kicking Aiba the next time he sees him just for being so sentimental. But then he thinks Aiba would just smile warmly at him and Nino wouldn’t be able to do anything but smile back. 

“He passed it on to me and now I guess I can pass it on to you,” Jun says. 

“Do either of them know about it?” Nino asks. No one is in the room but them but he nods over to where Ohno and Sho usually sit in the dressing room. 

Jun shakes his head. “No,” he says. “But when you think one of them need it you can give it away.” 

“What was your wish?” Nino asks, still unable to pinpoint exactly what it is. 

“That Aiba’s wish wouldn’t be for nothing,” Jun says. “That if anything was holding us back I could interfere.” 

“And this was holding us back?” Nino asks. Half amused, half uneasy.

Jun just smiles and speaks in that gentle way he does sometimes. “You know it wouldn’t be quite right to leave it like it is,” Jun says. 

“There were other times you could have used it,” Nino grumbles. It hasn’t always been easy. There have been scandals. Ohno wanted to leave. 

“I asked the wish to tell me when it wanted to be used,” he says. 

Nino looks down, takes his foot out of one of his slippers and nudges it around on the floor. He was with Minoru for two years to try to get over the way he felt about Ohno. 

“You just believed Aiba?” Nino asks. “Just like that?” 

Aiba is easy to trust but they were young back then and didn’t have all of the years behind them that they have now. 

Jun nods. He probably knows what Nino is getting at. But then he leans in closer. “I knew he was telling the truth when he did this,” Jun says. 

He squeezes Nino’s shoulder, whispering the last part into his ear. And he can feel it. The wish comes out in Jun’s breath and through his fingertips and for a split second Nino’s whole body feels alive with it. The ability to make a wish, to make real magic happen. 

That night Ohno spends the night in Nino’s bed. He doesn’t leave in the morning. 

The next year Ohno moves in permanently and that’s when Nino stops lying to the magazines and variety show hosts. They don’t actually believe him anyway. 

The year after that Nino gives the wish to Sho and sometime after that he gives it to Ohno. 

Nino tells Jun that he wished for the Playstation 5 and its library of games before anyone else has it. He tells Jun that Ohno wished to catch a really big fish. 

Really all of them wished the same wish. One at a time. 

The night before their 20th anniversary concerts begin they meet at a yakiniku restaurant and Aiba is the one who says it. 

“We all did it then?” he says. 

Jun sits back and nods casually. He spent fifteen years with the secret, holding on to it like a treasure. Sho and Ohno nod too and Nino is the last to join them. 

“Are we supposed to... do something with it then?” Aiba laughs. 

“It’s already gone now isn’t it?” Ohno says. 

“I can still feel it,” Aiba looks from one to the other. “You all used it... right?” He looks at Nino a little accusingly and Nino sighs. 

“I think we just have to do this,” Nino says, raising his glass. 

Jun joins him and soon five glasses are in the air and Aiba calls out _Cheers!_ and they drink and laugh and laugh at Aiba some more the next day when he shows up to rehearsals with sunglasses and a convenience store bag full of energy drinks. 

At the concert Nino laughs at Sho when he messes up his choreography and Aiba laughs when Jun has to nudge Ohno awake on the stage since he’s forgotten to speak during the MC. 

After it’s over Nino takes Ohno’s hand and pulls him back behind the costume rack. It’s less about hiding and more about privacy but in the beginning when they stole kisses this was where they would do it. He wraps his arms around and Ohno wraps his around in kind. It’s easy, comfortable, and he gently opens Ohno’s lips with his own in a soft kiss. 

He lets his fingers move to tangle in Ohno’s hair, a little stiff from product so it stays the way it’s supposed to on the stage. He feels as Ohno moves their hips together, just a little tease and the most they could ever get away with behind the rack. 

“Ohno-san?” Nino says, pulling away just enough to speak. 

“Yeah?” Ohno whispers. 

“Make a wish.”


End file.
